Snow delights

Snow causes havoc for drivers but delight for children

Anton McNulty

AN UNEXPECTED heavy snowfall on Friday morning was greeted with delight by young children on their Christmas holidays, but caused havoc for motorists on the roads around Mayo, resulting in road blockages in some parts of the county.
Despite Met Éireann forecasting that Mayo would escape the worst of the weather, temperatures plunged to minus six degrees Celsius in Claremorris and a thick blanket of snow fell on Friday morning.
While young children were out making snowmen and having snowball fights, drivers were not so grateful for the white end to Christmas. Gardaí reported that nine car accidents took place on Friday morning but all of the accidents were minor and there were no serious injuries.
A number of roads in Ballina, Castlebar and Westport were closed as a result of cars jack-knifing on the slippery roads. A jack-knifed lorry resulted in the closure of the main Westport to Castlebar road and High Street and Peter Street in Westport were also closed for a period of time.
However, much to the delight of many motorists, the conditions improved during the day with the snow turning to slush at lunchtime on Friday, and most roads were safe for driving within a few hours.
A Garda spokesperson told The Mayo News that a large amount of snow fell in a matter of hours and motorists in the county are not used to driving in it. He said there were a number of delays but there were no major accidents. He also warned motorists to be careful of black ice on the roads over the coming days. He explained that a number of accidents occurred around the county when cars skidded on black ice which was covered by a puddle of water.
Mr John Condon, Secretary of Mayo County Council, told The Mayo News that the Council have a number of weather sensors on various roads around the county and were thus expecting the low temperatures and had gritted the main roads on Thursday night. He explained that the roads are gritted mainly for ice and frost but when the snow fell, the roads were gritted again.
Mr Condon said there are over 6,000km of roads in Mayo and they had to be realistic and concentrate on gritting the roads with the most traffic.
“We knew there were going to be low temperatures overnight and we gritted the road on Thursday night, which reduced the effect of the snow. When it continued to fall we went out again and it resulted in the main roads remaining open. We do have an early morning system located on various roads, which is connected to a computer and tells us the ground temperature. When it decreases we send out the gritters. We did that night, reloaded and went out again when the snow came,” he said.
Heavy snow and ice at Ireland West International Airport Knock also resulted in the 11.05am Ryanair flight from Luton being diverted to Shannon Airport. Passengers were bussed from Shannon to Knock but the 11.30am flight to Luton was cancelled and the passengers were put on the next remaining flight to London. A spokesperson at Knock Airport said that it was the pilot’s decision to divert to Shannon and no other flight into or out of Knock was affected by the weather.